I took a look at your site and love it. Going to keep reading for sure.

Thanks again! Hope you keep reading!

Cheers!

The pencil thing is weird, isn’t it? I mean, I know there are a lot of pencils in schools, but I’ve always wondered why that particular smell is so often associated with going to school when you’re a child. Haven’t smelled any trees yet, though it sounds pretty good to me.

As for how to know if a wine is young, there are a couple of things that will tell you besides the vintage, obviously.

Color is one thing. Most young red wines, to my knowledge, have a darker color, and that color is more solid on the rim of the wine when you tilt the glass. The older a red wine gets, the more amber in color it becomes. With whites, the color tends to be lighter the younger it is.

Smell is another. Young red wines have less of it. Sometimes a wine just has no nose altogether, but if you have a 5-7 year old bottle of red wine, and it smells like nothing at all, it might not be of the best quality.

Taste is the best way to tell, of course. Young red wines taste more tannic, and may have a slightly bitter tinge, regardless of the varietal. Young white wines tend to be more grassy or smell like herbs.

Of course, these things don’t always denote a young wine, so don’t quote me.

That’s my very non-expert knowledge on the subject. Hope it helps!

Second, a memory related to pencil sharpenings. We just took a trip up to Sequoia National Park and encountered a cedar tree. A sign was posted next to it to encourage people to smell the distinct cedar odor. Immediately I was transported to my childhood and my cedar pencil box. I loved to just sit there and smell it. Good stuff.